So the latest in NM: Gallup in full lockdown, the rest of Navajo country is still in bad shape. But in my interpretation, flat or declining in practically the rest of the state. A lot of us were dreading getting through April but it's a new month now. So how'd we do?
The conclusion of my tracking through and since the end of April is that the curve was essentially flat or declining the latter half of the month, as above chart shows. This is based on a method I’ve come up with to try to get active cases only and adjust past results to current testing rates. On any given day, if we assume that infected patients recover after a 14-day cycle, we should not be counting the numbers prior to that. We should also account for the fact that the number of tests keeps going up (now 3,200 a day with a goal of 5k). So each day we adjust those past 14 results upward (using what I call a "retro multiplier") to the current day's testing rate. The result is a curve that has been favorable since April 11.
Applying this method to the counties housing the state’s biggest cities Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces, you see stable or declining numbers. In Bernalillo County, the state’s most populous, the rate came down fast after the middle of the month. This might be due to having it better managed at eldercare and retirement communities.
I’m a data analyst for a non-profit that is contracted to provide lab and emergency data to the NM Department Health, but I'm open to anyone pointing out this approach is just happy talk. Unfortunately I can't do much with the state epidemiologists I directly work with, as they are too overwhelmed to critique this freelance approach. However, NM's considerable scientific community has been tapped and the state has published cvmodeling.nmhealth.org which is a much deeper dive into real epi methodology. We can forget about that utterly ridiculous social distancing scorecard they were pushing a while ago (that stupidly based stay-at-home compliance on cellphone movement), this is quite good. And an NY Times piece gave the state high ratings, though it was fairly fluffy, to the point where you could argue our governor's or Lovelace Health Systems' PR department wrote it.
This approach certainly hasn’t produced great news all around. The diary’s topline shows the picture in the Native American counties. I had to put it on a log scale because the rate in McKinley (home to Gallup) is over 100 cases per 10 thousand. Yep that’s between 10 and 20 times that of most other counties. San Juan, a major Navajo county, is lower but not improving. Sandoval has been declining, possibly because cases in the Pueblo communities have been pretty well managed since the outbreaks in early to mid April. Cibola County is kind of a special case: it does have a decent share of native population, but the mayor of the largest town there has decided to be a total weenie and advise locals to ignore the state’s stay-at-home orders (and a pawn shop is paying a hefty $60k fine as a result). My assumption is he’s just jonesing to be offered a reality TV show. The latter end of their chart seems to be creeping back upward. A direct result of the mayor’ foolishness? Possibly.
So the main concern is what will happen in the Indian lands. It appears the Pueblo surge we saw two weeks ago has been managed, but it's still raging badly in Navajo country. Gallup may be the first city in the US to be fully locked down (though I presume you can still drive through on I-40). With business restrictions being lightly relaxed elsewhere (though nowhere near as carelessly as certain other states), we’ll see if we can still hold the line.